The Best Thing That Ever Happened To You, Part 3

Photo: 4uquotesru.comHere's the thing about conflict: I don't love it, and I would prefer not to have it in my life, but I do understand that sometimes, it's necessary. I like to think of it as being a rock in one of those Rock Tumbler Kits that we all had (or wished we had) as kids. It probably didn't feel great, to be that dull rock that was plucked from some kid's garden and tossed into that annoyingly loud tumbler. But occasionally you have to go through a lot of noise and at-times-painful jostling to get to the shiny and smooth.
In the end, there was fall-out from my decision to fire that former client. Have you ever had a discussion with someone where, the more calm and rational you remained, the more livid and out of control they became? Yeah. It was like that. And then I had a friend yell at me for something I said on Twitter, and then I unwittingly got involved in a tense discussion that I didn't want to be involved in, and then a simmering resentment was finally forced into the open with an acquaintance, and it was like, "ENOUGH. I just wanna move to a cabin in the woods again and become a reclusive writer and I'll go to Mooselips on Friday night for one cocktail so that people don't think I'm becoming the Unabomber but then THAT IS IT."
It was a stressful time.
And while it sucked - like, super really totally sucked - I dofeel that we learn the most about who we are when we are in the midst of conflict. And the trick, I think, to turning that conflict into something good is figuring out who you want to be at the end of it. Do you just want to win? Or do you want to come out of it knowing that you handled yourself well? Do you want to get your way? Or is it more important to diplomatically create future peace?
I will be the first to say that I've had to learn - a lot - not to just spout my mouth off when I feel like it. I know this might surprise some of you, but I'm...a bit of a firecracker. And even better/worse, I seem to have a knack for knowing how to sling words in a way that will fully hit their mark. But in recent years, I've learned that - when it's possible - it's better to keep my mouth shut and simply forgive and delete. Sometimes, I don't always have to tell everyone exactly how I feel, you know?
So when it came to this particular conflict, I decided to flex the muscles of brief, cordial, and professional. I somehow had an inkling that if this thing escalated, it would be best if my communication remained a stark contrast to theirs. And it did escalate...it escalated to bullying, then verbal abuse, and then to threats, all in the timeline of one email exchange (my exchange was somewhere along the lines of, "I understand that you're asking for this but I politely decline to do that at this time." and theirs was along the lines of, "You better watch your back."). And here's the part where, when your mettle is tested, you find out what you're made of:  I know I can be a powerful person, but especially as a woman, there's always been a small part of me, deep down inside, that worried what I would do if someone threatened my personal safety. Would I fight or flee? Here's the knowledge I gained that I'll now have with me for the rest of my life: When push comes to shove, I'm not going to let someone else hurt me. I'm not even going to let that someone threaten that they're going to try to hurt me. When my well-being is threatened, I'm not going to whimper and play dead...I'm going to do the thing that you're supposed to do with a bear who's roaring at you: I'm going to draw myself up to full height and roar the fuck back.
(In this instance, roaring back was stating, in no uncertain terms, that I would no longer be entertaining any further communication from this person, and that if they insisted upon continuing to infringe upon my personal comfort, I would react accordingly. And then I followed it up with a police report then they didn't take my advisement seriously. Yeah. It got THAT crazy, you guys.)
And it was scary, and it was stressful, and it was kind of unbelievable. It was hard for me, at first, to not blame my own judgment - how had I not seen this type of thing in this person before? But as my friend Larkin reminded me, "It's hard to spot crazy from far away."
Damn straight.
And if anything, that experience confirmed for me that I was right to disassociate myself from that person when I did. 
And here's The Big Point, and here's what I want to share with you: Looking back, I realized that the best things that ever happened to me all sprouted up from the soil of conflict. There has never been a "Oh, things were totally easy and super awesome and I was having a blast and this thing just came along and then life got even better!" Nope. Not even close. And while, again, sometimes it's simply a matter of deciding that you're going to turn those lemons into some super sweet hard hippie lemonade, it's heartening, isn't it, to realize that sometimes those suckholes are only a few digs away from finding a glittering seam of gold?

So now that that part was (essentially) over, it was time to start figuring out exactly what I wanted that seam of gold to look like.